


Elemental

by Linane



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Body Modification, Dystopian future AU, Elements, M/M, Sci-Fi, emotional h/c, h/c
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 09:17:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16992255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linane/pseuds/Linane
Summary: In the near future when resources on planter Earth run out, humans are forced to make extraordinarily hard choices just to stay alive. The results leave them changed forever.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlmarvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlmarvel/gifts).



> I am re-posting my own story, as I have now written a little sequel and it won't make sense unless it's treated as a whole. Besides, I felt like this story needed a proper space for itself. There may or may not be more of this AU added at a later date.

_Be careful my darling_  
_Be careful of what it takes_  
_What I've seen so far_  
_The good ones always seem to break_

~~~~~

They say they aren’t human. Not after the chemistry takes effect.

They come only from the poorest families, those that can’t afford even just a sleeping pod.

By the twenty fourth century the space on planet Earth has indeed become a pricey commodity, with massive overpopulation and strain on resources forcing everyone except the super-rich to contain their entire existence in modules no bigger than a size of an adult male plus thirty centimetres on either side.

Efficient, equipped with air and water filters, stackable into hive-like structures to conserve the heat.

Simply somewhere to sleep.

Fili signed up for the Programme when he and Kili stopped fitting into a single module in their early teens. Too many arms and legs, too tight to fit in through the hatch, too much strain on the systems not designed to keep two people alive.

He must have known for years that he day would come when Kili inherited the pod. Their mother never planned on having two sons.

He said his goodbyes, joking that Kili would struggle to sleep if he wasn’t wedged in properly, yet in his eyes Kili read sadness, plain as day, and perhaps a dash of fear.

Fear was not an emotion that normally featured in Fili’s eyes and Kili would never, ever forget the look on his face that day.

He was right of course; not only couldn’t Kili sleep, he didn’t know how to _exist_ without the other half of his soul, Fili’s breaths, laughter, constant care and gentle teasing he’s known all his life.

For Kili that was ten years ago.

They say you get to choose your poison. _Element_ they call it, but of course it’s only a question of what type of pollution will ultimately kill you.

Fili chose water, and so they turned him into an undine.

The idea is that if not everyone can live in conditions suitable for humans, then perhaps some should live in conditions that are not.

Water, fire, earth, air.

Companies sub-contracted by governments to turn those who can’t eke out a space for themselves within the civilisation into creatures that might survive outside of it.

Undine, salamanders, gnomes and sylphs.

They say they aren’t human. Not after the chemistry takes effect.

Kili thinks it’s to justify the monstrosity of the process: wings bolted on by machines to spines, never-ending scorching or drowning and the inevitable onsets of insanity caused by darkness and solitary confinement.

It takes years to twist a human into a creature that can be released.

In the meantime Fili can’t have a pod, but he _is_ entitled to a tank.

Kili stares into blue eyes, with whites turned red from constant exposure to salt water and levels of pollution consistent with those present in the oceans today. His golden hair twists around his head in a beautiful halo and it may have grown long, but there are braids there, still, meticulously put in, like the ones they used to weave in for each other when they were children.

He thinks the one thing Fili must hate the most is having his ability to speak stripped away from him. Water doesn’t carry sound the same, and communication isn’t deemed necessary to survive in the seas.

His lips move as he tries to say something, _Kili_ perhaps, and reaches out a hand with nails turned into claws.

They’ve taken away his tears too: salt water mixes with salt water and it’s only the look of agony and shame on his face that betrays his feelings, seeing his little brother after all those years.

The public aren’t allowed to visit; not after the subject begins their _transition_. The death rate is estimated at over thirty per cent, but this fact won’t be uncovered until much later.

Fili’s process isn’t complete yet. He’s obviously been through the chemo and they’ve taken his lungs and replaced them with gills, fitted between his ribs. They haven’t started on the rest of his internal organs or his legs though, but they will soon, if the various lines and writing covering his body are any indication.

Where to cut, what to remove, where the bolts go, which will fuse his legs together.

They say they aren’t human.

Kili closes his eyes, and bites his lip against the supernova of overwhelming fury and guilt fused into one. It’s the most intense feeling he has ever experienced.

The public doesn’t know, doesn’t ask. They don’t know what it’s _like_ , what it looks like, what it _feels_ like to have bits of yourself ripped out, replaced, changed.

Fili came to this place willingly, to have these things done to him, even though he knew he would never see Kili again. He did it, so Kili could have a tiny space left to live in.

Kili presses his hand to the cool glass, watches his brother reach out to line up his own, but he shakes his head no and tries to ignore how hurt Fili looks at being denied.

Instead he concentrates the ever-burning heat inside him into the tips of his nails, where it will hurt marginally less than if he used his fingertips, and starts melting a clean, straight cut through the reinforced glass of Fili’s tank.

Kili chose fire. Because it’s the most painful. Because he wanted to be destroyed. Because it burned away his tears.

He never expected to be made powerful.

The undine stares at him, but he doesn’t resist or protest, even as water – the one thing he needs to survive - starts leaking through the ever-widening crack Kili is creating.

They hold each other’s gaze, but it’s hard to tell if it’s trust, resignation, or gratitude in Fili’s eyes as Kili works on the tank.

Underneath all those boiling emotions there’s guilt. In the end his sacrifice hasn’t made a jot of a difference. No doubt he thinks he’s failed.

Perhaps he thinks that Kili came to kill him. He isn’t quite right, but nor is he completely wrong.

At this point Fili has less than four minutes left to live.

Kili remembers shattered tanks he found five years ago, the bloodied mess that was left of their inhabitants. The laboratory is in the realm of humans and that makes it vulnerable when the meteorite hits. Not like the stable depths of the sea, the empty vastness of the skies, or the impenetrable strength of the bedrock.

Or fires. Fires that are about to sweep away the old.

He doesn’t expect it when Fili hits at the unfinished cut in the glass from the inside, but it’s enough, and it all explodes outwards in a flurry of sharp glass and salty water.

Perhaps Fili just wants it all to end.

When Kili comes round, he can already hear the distant roar of the hit wave, wailing sirens and he realises that it must be almost too late.

Fili is there with him, writhing on top of his chest, clawing at his shirt, ripping it to shreds and leaving deep gauges in his skin.

 _He’s dying_ , Kili realises, watching blue eyes roll back, and he must have been without water for several minutes now –

It wasn’t meant to happen like this. Kili was never meant to cause all this agony, weak spasms of Fili’s body, his legs kicking out as he slowly suffocates, his eyes full of helpless questions.

It doesn’t matter now.

All Kili can do is grab his brother and wrap himself as tight around him as when they were children, sharing a single pod, a single mind, a single soul.

All that is left is to send the signal.

~~~~~

Kili measures time in the beeps of the machines which slowly, painstakingly filter salt and chemicals out of Fili’s blood.

He looks like hell: unnaturally pale, swathed in bandages, exhausted.

And yet, his heart goes on.

When Fili finally comes round, they’re still wrapped up in each other as tight as possible, even though there’s a whole, wide bed to spread out on. For many, the _pod syndrome_ never goes away.

“Ki… li…” he whispers, hoarse and not at all like Fili should sound.

A second, two, luxurious closeness and –

Fili trashes, having realised that he’s produced a sound and that he’s breathing air.

“Shhhh… easy! You’re alright, you’re okay, Fili. Just breathe with me a while. In… and out… In…” They have learned the rhythm a long time ago: one chest expanding, as the other one deflates. The only way they could fit. Together they fall right back into it and manage to stave off the panic. For now.

“You have your lungs again,” Kili whispers. “Bio-grown from your own DNA, so they’re near-identical to the ones they took away from you. The gills have been removed, though they haven’t yet started on the wounds left behind. You need to heal a bit more first.” He hesitates. “I wouldn’t normally take those decisions from you, but you were critical for a while and we needed to make a call.”

Fili stares at the faint black lines along the sides of his fingers, where the webbing was meant to go, and at the claws that have been trimmed, but aren’t quite nails yet.

“There are also nanites working on your vocal chords. Medically, it’s fairly minor, but I thought it would be important to you. They will be a few days yet, so try to speak as little as you can.”

Fili nods, though the array of questions and things he wants to say is obvious in his eyes.

Instead for a while he simply curls up around Kili, arms pulling him even closer if that’s even possible, holding onto him for dear life, and Kili returns the hug, heart pounding, eyes burning with tears medically incapable of falling.

They never thought they could have this once more.

“Where?” Fili croaks eventually.

“ _When_ ,” Kili corrects him gently. “For you, it’s five years into the future of where you left off. For me, it’s ten years since you left for the Programme.”

Fili shows him the crisp lines in a silent question.

“We jumped into the future, Fee. You were going to die, and I wasn’t going to let you.”

Fili closes his eyes, trying to wrap his head around the concept of there _being_ a future.

“It was a bit touch and go for a while,” Kili admits, trying to offer as many answers as possible. “The day I came for you was the day a giant meteorite hit the Earth, wiping away civilisation as you remember it. Most of those who survived were Elementals, better adapted to the extremes that followed. Some humans did too, but one thing was certain: nobody cared anymore; it only mattered that you were alive.”

He pauses when Fili slots his fingers between Kili’s, something like marvel reflected in his eyes.

“There were two predominant technologies left all around us: one designed to preserve human life with minimal possible amount of resources and waste, and the other centred around medical tech and body modification. Out of those developed self-sustained space travel and ability to relieve or reverse elemental changes altogether.”

That makes Fili’s eyes snap up, and it’s by the hope there that Kili knows he’s made the right choices for him.

“You have fire,” his brother shifts his focus to study Kili’s scorched nails, which up until recently were able to melt reinforced glass. “I’m sorry,” he adds in a broken voice and Kili’s heart rebels against such guilt.

“Don’t be. It was my own choice. Besides, I had most of it reversed. Re-grew my skin and hair. I only kept some of my element to be able to save you.”

“How?”

Kili smiles. “It’s a bit of a story, actually. We first discovered time travel was possible when we took to the stars. It’s a side product of going faster than light, but it takes a lot of resources, so each person is only allowed to go once. You see, the remaining gene pool we had just wasn’t big enough, especially if you consider that some Elementals wouldn’t be able to have offspring with others. If we controlled it, we could survive for around six more generations. But we were all so proud to be human, still, despite everything, and there is nothing more human than the ability to choose the ones we love. We bring them back, Fili. One by one, so we can have a future.”

“Love…?” Fili whispers, the word heavy, thick with everything he’s endured and helpless hope.

 _They could have ripped him apart and all his pieces would have still loved me,_ Kili thinks, touches his brother’s cheek, searches his eyes, drowns in the longing he finds there.

They kiss as if they only had a single breath to pass between them, as if it was the only moment they were allowed to have each other. More than a decade of having only half a soul, of screams exploding in clear bubbles, of whatever it was that Fili told himself as he allowed them to hurt him again and again.

“You…” Fili breathes against his lips, winces when his vocal chords won’t cooperate any more.

“Yes. I do. Always have. I’ve never loved anyone but you, Fili.”

Fili will say it too; a thousand times, in a hundred different ways, and in time they will forgive themselves for all their crimes perceived and the handful committed. But right now he can only kiss Kili again, deeper, slower, more like Kili imagined Fili might kiss.

Right now there’s only closeness, taste of sea salt on his tongue and that precious, obvious love.

~~~~~


	2. Chapter 2

 

 _Tell me that it wasn't pointless_  
_Tell me it was real for you_  
_Tell me that it had a purpose_  
_Who knows, I might believe it's true_

~~~~~

 

Fili is concentrating so hard that he doesn’t react when Kili walks through their cabin door.

Instead he appears to have created a small droplet of water, which is currently hovering gently about an inch above his fingertips, slowly, very slowly increasing in size as Fili persuades the moisture in the air around it to join in with the globule.

He doesn’t know how he’s doing it.

The current running theory is that it’s caused by the chemicals he’s been exposed to and his own mind developing new ways of protecting his body from the element among a completely inappropriate habitat.

Like all Elementals, Fili and Kili use a higher percentage of their brain than ordinary Humans - close to 18% in their case, compared to the usual 10%.*

The additional 8% is allegedly what kept them alive through levels of pain that would have stopped less adapted hearts and what they now use to control their Element.

It was never something the Programme intended. But here they are nonetheless.

“Fili,” he murmurs softly as not to startle his brother.

Fili blinks and looks up, water instantly breaking its shape and dripping down his fingers.

“Hi,” he smiles and relaxes back down into his pile of pillows. “How was your session?”

 

_”I want to kill them. All of them. Hurt them, burn them, little by little, with fire. I imagine it sometimes, late at night, what I would do, exactly how I would make them suffer. I want to torture them for how much they hurt him. For what they were about to do to him. For the things he told himself. That he could take it, even when he really couldn’t.”_

_“Is it possible that you’re actually angry with yourself? That it’s a self-destruction mechanism? After all, he did it all for you.”_

 

Kili clenches his fists. Unlike Fili, whose problems are guilt and an overwhelming sense of loss, Kili struggles most of all with anger, not at all sure that he wants to let it go. It’s something he will have to resolve though, before he makes the decision about whether he wants to keep any of his Element or not.

“Fine. It went just fine.”

Fili watches him, but doesn’t press. Not yet. He knows how to play this right – he will carefully help him untangle his emotions when Kili isn’t feeling quite so volatile about the subject.

“You brought me a gift,” he points out instead, smiling hopefully and pushing off the bed.

“Hm…? Oh, yes! I took a detour through the green modules and managed to wrangle these little beauties off the agri staff.” Kili lifts the cloth from his little basket, revealing no less than five blushing apples.

He watches Fili lift one up and press his nose right into the shiny skin, closing his eyes and inhaling the sweet aroma in quiet delight.

“Mind you, it’s only the fourth harvest, so they’re awfully sour still,” Kili points out, “but I’m reliably informed that slow baking with a bit of sugar will bring out their natural sweetness and make them perfectly edible.”

There are two biggest miracles that Kili has discovered to date:

One is life itself. This mysterious force that drives tiny apple seeds to sprout and thrive with nothing more than a bit of energy from the stars and some bedding capable of holding moisture and nutrients. In the time they come from, apples are almost unheard of, and yet the species still survives, offered a new beginning out here, on one of the arc ships, lost in space.

The other one is human mind, with its ingenuity, comprehension skills and potentially limitless resources. It only takes one mind to change the course of history. A handful is capable of saving them from extinction and re-building everything they lost with almost no physical resources to utilise. There is enough potential there to learn how to painstakingly undo years of humanity stumbling along the completely wrong path.

It also only takes one mind to guide them in re-building themselves. Thoughtful words, patience, compassion and empathy and it’s like an entire universe, where Fili and Kili can work through years of shattered emotions and discover who they are now. They have sessions on alternating days so they can support each other, and a couples’ therapy once a week.

How do you heal a history of mankind? How do you heal yourself when you can’t even clearly tell _what_ you are anymore?

It’s painful, but it’s also addictive: making progress, learning about each other, discovering love, _real love_ , not just the love remembered, tucked away carefully in the depths of their hearts.

He remembers Fili as this cocky teenager, who left afraid, but swaggering, for Kili’s sake. The Fili of today is different: quiet, careful, disbelieving and hurt, but he’s also exactly the same as he’s always been: strong, loyal, brave and capable of saying just the right thing, exactly when Kili needs it most.

“Baked apples make me think of Christmas.” Fili interrupts his thoughts, as if on cue. “Remember the little street stalls that always used to pop up –“

Kili grins at him, his heavy thoughts all but forgotten.

Fili blinks. “Wait a minute, what day is it today?”

“14th of December,” Kili informs him helpfully.

Fili snorts. “That’s ridiculous. We’re not even revolving around the same _star_ any more…”

“You should see the decks! The lights are dimmed and they’ve taken a bunch of tokens and put them up as holo- fairy lights along the corridors. They even have holo-snow!”

Fili looks around their cabin. Holo illusions have become an essential part of normalising their current environment on the ship, but to people like Fili, who only knows the grim pre-apocalyptic reality, they’re nothing short of magic: images he’s only ever seen in pictures from the distant past, now surrounding him, looking real enough to touch.

Holo tech is what gives them, for the very first time, a _home_.

Their favourite ‘skin’ is a house on the beach, with one wall devoted entirely to a pair of French door opening onto golden sand lapped by gently rolling waves. It’s configured to follow everything from time of the day, though cries of birds, varied weather patterns and even the air conditioning pretending to be occasional breeze coming in through the door. The sounds of moving water help soothe them both and ease them gently into sleep at night.

“Want to re-decorate to something more seasonal?” Fili offers, amusement and glee in his eyes.

Kili does, but he’s worried about Fili’s still-healing wounds, from where his gills used to be. His eyes automatically shift to the soft, padded dressing visible around his ribs, under Fili’s worn Henley shirt. He’s generally okay to move around the room and he can venture outside if accompanied by Kili, but he gets tired easily. It’s only been a couple of months after all, and he’s got a long way to go yet.

It isn’t easy, re-wiring a body re-conditioned for drowning.

“It’s alright,” Fili reassures him, coming closer, bringing the familiarity of contact together with him. He could always tell what Killi was thinking. “The older stitches are coming out in two days and then they can start working on the internal scar tissue.”

Kili swallows, and presses his forehead to Fili’s.

“I haven’t been bleeding in close to two weeks, Kili,” his brother whispers, his blue eyes warm. “Besides, it’s _Christmas_.”

“Alright, but don’t push it. You’ve re-opened your wounds once before.”

They start with a Christmas tree, obviously, faffing and grumbling, until computer finally adjusts the projection to their exact specifications. It’s an unapologetically live tree, slightly wonky from where they’ve been a bit too eager adding branches, green and cheerful and lightly dusted with golden glitter.

Then they reach for the tokens, which are little cubes or balls of waste plastic, placed within a special field as markers for where the decorations should be located. They swiftly turn them into chains of little golden hover-lights, tinsel and all kinds of baubles. It all clashes a bit between Fili trying to go for the really old-fashioned ginger breads and dried orange slices and Kili designing ever-weirder colourful baubles, but it’s all _theirs_ and they wouldn’t change it for the world.

When Fili starts swaying on his feet, Kili is there in an instant, gently guiding him to sit down by the table.

“Fili?” he worries his lip.

“I’m alright. It’s just… the joints.”

Gravity is one of Fili’s biggest enemies still - after years of floating unimpeded in the water, his bone and muscle structures have forgotten the seemingly unnecessary skill of resisting it.

Kili wordlessly reaches for the pain killers and Fili just as wordlessly takes them from his hands.

“I’m okay,” he repeats, searching Kili’s eyes. “Just… can you finish without me?”

Kili _can_ , but instead he leans in for a reassuring kiss and hovers close for a moment, just to dispel any frustration Fili will be feeling with his body and his own sense of worry.

Eventually Fili smiles, as the drugs successfully block some of his pain receptors. “Honestly, Kee. Go, finish the tree. And pass me one of those apples – I thought we should save them for the Christmas Day, but I’d like to try one now, so we’re sure that it’ll work.”

That finally kicks Kili back into action, passing Fili the basket and a knife, and focussing on their tree once more.

If the remaining decorations are a bit haphazard, it’s because Kili is somewhat distracted, first by watching Fili and making sure that he’s not pushing himself too far, and then by the mouth-watering aroma of a baking apple.

“Cinnamon would have been nice,” Fili murmurs, cutting the steaming treat in half. “You know, just for the full decadent effect,” he grins ruefully and it’s in moments like these that Kili is 100% certain that he loves him as more than a brother.

Neither of them has ever tasted cinnamon of course, but they have heard stories. It’s that mythical spice that disappeared a while before they were born, when African planes were settled and the trees were cut down.

At least sugar is easy to construct chemically.

They take their first bite simultaneously and also simultaneously wince. It’s still awfully sour.

“Caramel,” Fili declares in a last minute stroke of genius, and Kili gives him a kiss for his brilliance.

He fetches their little pot of sugar, sprinkles both portions liberally and then simply holds his palm over each fruit in turn, watching the scorching heat caramelize the little crystals.

“Show off,” Fili grumbles, lifting the inside of his palm to inspect that there is no damage and carefully pressing the pads of his fingers to the skin there – Fili has burned himself before.

The heat does hurt, but in a short burst like that Kili has learned to block the pain and his tissues have learned to withstand it. It’s a part of what he is now and Kili doesn’t try to deny it.

“I’m alright,” he repeats Fili’s earlier words. “I… cherish the chance to do something good, something useful with it.”

Fili looks him in the eye, then nods slowly, questions about Kili’s session appearing in his eyes once more, but once more pushed aside for now. “Let’s eat, while it’s still hot,” he suggests instead.

They change their walls, while sharing the sharp-and-sweet dessert.

“Wooden logs, like a cabin,” Fili demands, thoughtfully licking caramel off his spoon. He changes their exact appearance a couple of times, then laughs when Kili demands fairy lights criss-crossing the ceiling to add some light to the now relatively dark walls.

They add a fireplace in the corner because they never much liked the plain closet door and it makes Kili feel better, hearing the little cracks and hisses of the logs.

They move to bed after that because Fili really does need his rest. From there, curled up around each other and frequently interrupted by kisses, they re-design the scenery outside their French door.

“I was thinking a pine forest. Lush and snowy, like the ones in Scandinavia once upon a time,” Fili considers, flicking the image he’s just described onto the wall.

“Ooooh, we could have northern lights at night, that would be cool,” Kili points out, nuzzling into the crook of Fili’s neck.

“Yes, and stars! Lots of stars. You could never see the stars back in our days.”

“How do you feel about the mountains? Snowy peaks in the distance, little glowing villages dotted around. I saw a picture once…”

“I like it. We’ll need the trees to move to the sides to reveal the view…”

Fili falls asleep somewhere around the questions about whether they should add some snow fall. It’s his own, natural way of dealing with pain and it helps his healing, so Kili leaves him to it, curling up tight around him to help his subconscious find some peace in their closeness.

If Kili’s own subconscious decides that a nap would be an excellent way of putting some distance between Kili and his awful morning therapy session, Kili can’t help but agree.

He wakes up again to a pair of amused, blue eyes watching him.

“We are not leaving you in charge of re-decorating when you’re half asleep ever again,” Fili informs him.

Kili stares at him for a moment, until the soft white petals between them finally attract his attention.

He shivers and instantly nuzzles into Fili’s warm body. The snow is of course an illusion, but his eyes know what they see – close to 30 cm of the stuff, covering absolutely _everything_ inside their room - and they report faithfully to his brain.

“Remove snow, add to the vista instead,” Fili instructs and strokes Kili’s back soothingly. “I didn’t think you wanted a blizzard in the house.”

“There was a… misunderstanding,” Kili counters weakly.

“Mhmmm,” Fili agrees, but doesn’t tease him any further.

Kili searches his brother’s face, watches his unguarded eyes and luxuriates for a while in the endless comfort Fili seems ready to provide him with.

“Do you think I’m trying to destroy myself?” he asks quietly, his mind picking at the unresolved questions from earlier.

Fili’s hand pauses its work brushing through his hair. “Sometimes. Sometimes you use it like fuel, to be able to fight. And sometimes you find your peace,” his brother tells him honestly.

“I just wish none of it happened to us, to _you_. That we could have somehow avoided it.”

“You and me both. But it did, and we survived it all the same.”

Fili is the one and only person, who can always calm him down and help him find himself, as if Fili’s water was directly putting out Kili’s fires. His mere presence is soothing, grounding and often everything Kili needs.

He’s pretty sure that if they took his brother away again, Kili would burn the world to cinders.

“Tell me the things you’re grateful for,” Fili asks quietly.

“That you’re alive,” comes immediately. “That you’ll heal. That you can be made whole again, despite…” His vision blurs dangerously.

“Despite…?”

“I left you there. For five whole years. I _knew_ and I left you to suffer anyway,” Kili rips open the wound, which he’s only just discovered that morning. He was never one for patience.

“You had to. Everybody else did too.”

“Everybody else didn’t have the kind of brother I had.”

“Kili…” Fili carefully uses his thumbs to wipe away the tears, but they only keep coming – it’s a new addition, something Kili has only decided he needed back, after watching Fili fall apart in one of their sessions, and how much it seemed to free him of. “It was sold to you as the lesser evil. They all said it was ‘for the best’. Nobody knew the details of what it was really like, unless they went through the process themselves. _I_ didn’t know either, until they got started…”

It would have been easier perhaps, if Kili didn’t know, first hand, just what it takes to turn a human into an Elemental. How physical pain isn’t even the worst; it’s feeling yourself changing, feeling parts of you stripped away, seeing your body and feeling like it isn’t really yours.

“I never once felt abandoned by you, Kili. You were there with me, every step of the way. It was the thoughts of you that kept me sane – your laughter, your stubbornness, even your snarky remarks, as if you were there. I don’t blame you for what happened to me; I never could. You _saved me_ , literally and figuratively. You’re here now and I have more than I ever thought I would have.”

Kili can only sob, raw, empty and hollow in his own determination to hate himself.

“Kili…” it’s the softness of his brother’s voice that makes Kili look up through the clumps of his eyelashes. “I don’t need your hatred, towards yourself or otherwise. I only need your love.”

Kili sniffs, grinds his teeth, nods.

Can he stop himself burning? Can he kill the fire that has become the essence of what he is?

For Fili? Maybe.

“We’ll get through this,” Fili whispers, and then, “try again: tell me the things you’re grateful for.”

“That we’re together and that you love me.”

“Me loving you is about the only thing that makes sense to me some days,” Fili admits, and his warm, quiet smile makes Kili’s heart pound in his chest, instantly overruling the anger, sorrow and all the other insignificant emotions. “Want to know what I’ve been feeling grateful for recently?”

“What?”

“My obnoxious little brother strolling in and casually announcing Christmas.”

Kili snorts.

“And that I get to spend it with you, making it into our own thing,” he adds softer.

 

~~~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The 'humans only use 10% of their brain and would become all-powerful if we somehow managed to tap into the remaining 90%' is a complete urban myth. According to science, we use all of our brain, with some parts more active than others at different times. I wanted to use this little cliche nevertheless - this is a sci-fi AU and the concept is just too fascinating to ignore.


End file.
